How Crap TV Saved the World
by Lucillia
Summary: A year after Dumbledore, Black, the Lupins, and Harry Potter's parents revealed themselves to still be alive after the end of the Second War, Harry decides to get his revenge on them by inviting them to Rita Skeeter's new talk show so they could reveal themselves to the world as they really were and bring themselves down. On the set, the Wizarding World gets an unexpected surprise.


_Azrael felt slightly ill and somewhat dirty as he pulled off the costume that he had worn after the child who had visited him had headed back to do his duty. Rarely had someone so, well, pure used the stone that summoned him before, the last having been a five year-old child who had wanted to see his mother three hundred years ago. That poor boy..._

When Hermione had decided to try integrating the Muggle and Wizarding societies after the Second War by introducing muggle technology that almost seemed magical if one didn't know how it worked, she'd had no idea that something like this would happen. She should have seen it coming though, considering the fact that 90% of Muggle television programming across the planet was either News or Crap. Rather than running the Educational, News and C-Span type programming that she'd envisioned, they ran this...this instead, and it was all Skeeter's fault.

Rita Skeeter, who was ever aware of the demographic she catered to, had jumped into this new medium with both feet. Honestly, this new job of being a "Talk Show Host" was far less work than being a newspaper "reporter". The best part of it was that she didn't even need to go digging for dirt, because the people she invited to appear were more than happy to air out their dirty laundry in front of the cameras with little to no prompting.

Getting today's guests to appear on her show had been quite the coup...

"Ree-Taa, Ree-Taa, Ree-Taa." the crowd of witches and wizards chanted in a manner that would be familiar to millions of Americans who had been flipping through the channels and could find nothing else to watch besides a couple of women who looked like their addresses had the words "Trailer Park" in them ripping each-other's shirts off.

Considering the fact that this group was about as inbred as the denizens of said trailer parks were reputed to be, the fact that this particular show was the most popular thing on the new Wizarding Television Network shouldn't be all that surprising.

A year ago, if anyone had told Harry Potter that the Dursleys would adopt him as their own and treat him semi-decently, and that he would willingly be interviewed by Rita Skeeter for something that wasn't related to the war, he would have stared at them as if they were insane. That would be because he would have actually thought they were insane. That would have been before what had happened at the end of the Second War of course. After the end of the Second War, Harry was more than glad to speak with Rita Skeeter, and quite happy to say that he was a Dursley, thank you very much.

You see, what happened was that several months before Harry was born, there was a prophesy. Dumbledore had never lied to the boy about the wording of said prophesy, but he had lied about what he had thought it meant, and exactly what measures he had taken after he'd received the prophesy. As far as Dumbledore was concerned, the "He shall mark him as his equal" line was a bit more sinister than he let on to Harry when he'd shared the prophesy with him. It is because of that one line and the fate he had believed was ahead of Harry that he hatched his plan.

When two babies were born at the end of July, which by some coincidence almost exactly corresponded with the seventh month of some obscure magical calendar that year, it was decided that a test would be created to see which of the babies was to be marked, as neither set of parents wanted to raise the child who would become the next Dark Lord after Voldemort. When they went into hiding, both sets of parents secretly withdrew from their children, and had themselves discreetly replaced with homunculi who would tend to the children's needs until a definitive answer as to which child was to be a Dark Lord was reached. This had of course been done in secret, and only those who needed to know at the time knew. When little Harry Potter survived the Killing Curse through unknown means when the fake James and Lily had sacrificed themselves to save him on that Halloween, it was decided that he was the new Dark Lord in question, and the Longbottoms had returned to their son only to be tortured into insanity through the Cruciatus a few days later.

The Potters however had changed their names and moved to Canada, leaving their child behind without a second thought. As far as they were concerned, since Harry was a Dark Lord in the making, he wasn't their child, and the twins Lily had been expecting, Christian and Christina, were the only children they had. The money that had been in Harry's vault had not been Potter money as he'd been told by someone who hadn't been in the know when he was eleven, but the bequeathments that had been made by various childless witches and wizards to the Boy-Who-Lived. The Potters had drained Harry's Trust Vault and forbidden him access to the Potter Family Vault long before.

There were of course a couple of minor glitches with the plan that Dumbledore had made when the supposed future Dark Lord had been revealed, such as the fact that Sirius Black, who had not been informed of the plan, had been arrested for blowing up a street in a Muggle neighborhood after he went chasing after the Potters' "Secret Keeper". The Discovery of the Horcruxes had also been a nasty surprise, necessitating the temporary releasing of several powerful artifacts that would aid the new Dark Lord in his quest to destroy the old one. If Severus Snape mourned Lily Potter's supposed death until the day he died, that was nothing more than the man deserved as far as all who were in the know were concerned, as was Snape's death at Voldemort's hands which had been a key part of Dumbledore's plan.

All that this added up to was that when the dust cleared, and it was safe to come out of the hole that Dumbledore, the Potters, and a select few who had been brought in on the plan over the following years were hiding in as was part of the plan in which both Dark Lords were supposed to destroy each-other, they were very surprised to find a Harry Potter who was alive, well, and not very happy to see them.

Rather than hexing them and giving them a tongue lashing they would never forget as most who knew Harry expected him to do, the boy had remained silent, and instead chose to completely avoid Dumbledore, Black, the Potters, and the Lupins. People wondered about that, and wondered if the story that Dumbledore told about the prophesy that said that Harry Potter was supposed to become a Dark Lord was true, considering the fact that the young man had pretty much holed himself up inside his house for the last year avoiding almost all contact with the public. Frankly, the kid could be doing anything while he was shut in that house of his.

Harry however didn't care about his family's opinion too much, because he had Dudley, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Luna, and the Weasleys by his side. When it came to the Potters and the rest, he had been planning the perfect revenge, a revenge that would show the Potters and their friends who had been slandering him at every opportunity to the world for what they really were.

They say that revenge was a dish best served cold. That was why he had waited a year to get the perfect revenge on his family and those traitors who had been plotting his demise behind his back. It was a rather Slytherin revenge if he did say so himself. He would be seen as the innocent in all of this while those bastards who had been calling him any number of horrible things and trying to turn the wizarding world against him brought themselves down.

Rather than futilely railing at the Potters and looking like a bitter jerk in the process, he had quietly sent a letter to the Daily Prophet requesting a meeting and a chance at reconciliation between himself and his family and Dumbledore who had guided him through school and Lupin and Black who had told him they cared for him up until their supposed deaths. He then requested that the reconciliation be in a public place and be mediated by none other than Rita Skeeter whom he had seen bring a feuding couple that had been at each-other's throats for nearly fifty years back together just the week prior.

Sure, that letter probably made him look like a doormat, but after everyone saw Dumbledore, Black, the Potters, and the Lupins for what they really were, they'd feel all the sorrier for the poor abandoned boy who had tried to reconnect with his family only to have it thrown in his face, which suited him just fine since it would get everyone to shut up about him being the next Dark Lord.

He hadn't just chosen the Rita Skeeter Show because the woman owed him a favor. No, he had chosen the show because it had the highest viewership rating in the wizarding world in the four months it had been on the air, and because there was a little extra something in the studio wards that tended out to subtly bring out one or two of the nastiest aspects of the guests' characters for the entire world to see. He of course had a little counter to that ward thanks to the fact that Skeeter owed him, but his family, his entire family except for Dudley who had been raised to be a bully but had done his best to redeem himself, didn't, and neither did any of the Potters' friends who had been trying to lead him to his doom while claiming to help him and be there for him.

In the week leading up to that "reconciliation attempt", sales of wizarding televisions shot through the roof, and even old pureblood families who would never have been caught dead with something as Muggle as a Wizarding Wireless set were buying them. That "reconciliation attempt" was to be made today, and the entire Wizarding World, not just the British were eagerly awaiting it.

By the time the Bertie Botts commercial came to a close, millions of Wizards and Witches were sitting at the edges of their seats eagerly awaiting what was coming next. Before the commercial break, there had been a great deal of booing as Albus Dumbledore, who had taken the role of spokesperson for his group, had told the tale of how a prophesy had stated Harry would be Evil with a capital E, and how he had done everything for everyone's good, and James and Lily Potter and their friends Remus Lupin and Sirius Black had paraded James and Lily's well cared for twins Christian and Christina who had been born after their supposed demise in front of the cameras. Who wouldn't boo after hearing the heart rending story of how little baby Harry Potter who had weakened the Dark Lord because it had been his fate to do so had been abandoned on his aunt and uncle's doorstep in the middle of the night in November with nothing but a blanket to protect him from the elements and any stray animals such as the wild rats which had been infesting the neighborhood which might wander by?

A great deal of the booing took place in British Columbia where James and Lily and their children were decidedly unpopular, and not only because of the embarrassment they had caused the province when it had been discovered that they had been living there rather than being dead after nobly sacrificing themselves in the struggle against You-Know-Who as had been widely believed for seventeen years. James and Lily Potter's children had been the worst brats to ever have come to the Vancouver School of Magic, and had been expelled in their fifth year when one of the pranks they had pulled had almost killed another student. James and Lily had rather publicly protested this expulsion and tried to blame the victim for what happened, because if the unfortunate boy hadn't been a "Greasy Git who was a Dark Wizard in the making" in the first place, Christian and Christina wouldn't have tried to deal with him before he hurt anybody.

After Dumbledore gave his spiel and the Potters and their family and friends had paraded themselves across the stage, an American Seer from Brooklyn had been brought in to interpret the prophesy that had started everything. The man's profanity laced lecture had been quite educational in several areas, especially for those who had found ways around their t.v.'s automatic child safety settings, as they had had their vocabularies expanded significantly. One of the things that had been pointed out about the self-fulfilling prophesy was that despite the fact that it had mentioned Harry being "Marked as Voldemort's Equal", nowhere did it actually state that Harry would become a Dark Lord.

Now, it was time for Harry, poor Harry who had had his life destroyed by these people who had been using him as a disposable weapon against You-Know-Who, but was still willing to make things work between him and them because they had once been his friends and family to make his appearance...

"Screw it." Vernon said as he tossed back the rest of the contents of the bottle he'd snuck into the studio a minute before he and his family which included one Harry Michael Dursley born Harry James Potter were set to appear in front of the cameras.

Considering where he was right now, he needed all the help he could get, and an entire bottle of liquid courage would go a long way towards calming him down and getting him through the coming ordeal. The only reason he was here in this magical studio right now was because it was the only way his wife could confront her sister who had caused her so much pain and suffering over the years, and he was there to support her, and give that Potter bastard a piece of his mind. Lily had refused to see Petunia, and had sent back every one of the letters his darling wife who had been shocked to discover that her sister was alive had mailed.

Discovering that Harry had been abandoned on his family's doorstep because it was expected that they would abuse him had been quite the blow. Apparently, future Dark Lords weren't supposed to have happy homes where they were loved and cared for and their needs were met. You know, the sort of homes that might stop them from being Dark Lords in the first place considering the fact that the vast majority of criminals worldwide had troubled childhoods. Having his normal magic and God fearing family be manipulated in such a way was sickening.

Someone had accurately predicted the best way to get them to mistreat the boy and done just about everything they could to make it happen. The worst part was that rather than using mind control spells and easily discovered ward alterations, they had instead manipulated situations on order to get them further upset with Harry who had been an innocent in all this. Much to his and Petunia's disgust with both the ones responsible and themselves, there had been no fancy potion or prestidigitation that took their free will from them, there had instead been the old friend of the Evanses who had gone on and on about how wonderful Lily was and how much Harry was like her, and the boss who had decided not to promote him because he was obviously in with the wrong sort of crowd, considering the sort of people who had come looking for him on his day off, and the small bits of magical mayhem that was easily blamed on Harry which had taken place in and around his home amongst a million other small things that had started adding up rather quickly.

Had Harry not turned up on their doorstep, the worst they would have done would have been to turn out a spoiled and slightly over-indulged little brat, considering the fact that they didn't start really lavishing Dudley with every last thing his heart desired, and fulfilling his every whim until Harry had arrived. Sure, Dudley had been a bit spoiled as an infant, and had been given more food and attention than he needed, but if Harry hadn't arrived, and they hadn't been manipulated in the manner they had been, that would have tapered off as the years went by.

Had Harry not been abandoned on their doorstep, they would not have been here today to confront the utter bastards who had left him there and then later attempted to get the boy killed by the man they had tricked him and everyone else for that matter into believing had murdered his parents.

"Ree-Taa. Ree-Taa. Ree-Taa." the crowd on the other side of the stage from the Green Room he and his family currently occupied chanted.

"Dad." his son Dudley who had been the driving force behind Harry's adoption and name change said worriedly.

"Ma fine." he slurred. "'Zit time ye?"

Apparently, when he'd been fortifying himself with a bit of liquid courage, he'd had a bit too much to drink.

It was indeed time, and his family was being introduced by the host of the show they were appearing on. Though he would normally be embarrassed by the shame he was bringing his family as he stumbled from the green room to the stage where the rest of his family was sitting down, he was too drunk to care at the moment. After stumbling across the stage, he plopped himself down in a chair next to his dearest Petunia who was looking very good at the moment. At her urging, he faced forward and found himself looking at the finest ass he'd seen in a long time. Much to his disappointment, the ass vanished as its owner who had been addressing the crowd had turned around. She was a bottle blond who looked like she might have a little bounce to her.

"...Father of the family, Vernon Dursley." the woman was saying.

"Hey baby, have you ever heard of a ménage à trois?" he slurred at the woman as the tiny part of his brain that was sober screamed at him for some strange reason.

He didn't know why that part of his brain was screaming at him, it wasn't like he was in trouble with Pet. He and Pet had been talking about how they might spice up their marriage recently after all and that had been brought up as one of the options. You couldn't go wrong with a pair of blondes.

Dudley rapidly paled and grew queasy after his intoxicated father who had downed an entire bottle of Whiskey backstage had hit on the host of the show they were appearing on alongside those jerks who had abandoned Harry because some old drunk had said something that they had interpreted as saying that he would grow up to be Evil. Everything had screeched to a halt after his dad had asked if the woman had wanted to have a threesome with him and his mum which was horrifying in and of itself, and giving him mental images that would probably feature in his nightmares for years to come. The chanting had quieted as jaws were dropped all over the studio. Beside him, Harry was groaning and rubbing his temples and muttering something about something called an "Obliviate". Now that he thought about it, he'd heard that word several times as a number of witches and wizards had pointed their wands at their own heads. On his other side, his mother was looking absolutely livid, and glaring daggers at the Skeeter woman who was blushing at his dad like a little schoolgirl with her first crush.

This was not going to end well.

His mother probably would have lunged at the Skeeter woman if her sister hadn't spoken up, turning her ire against her instead. There had been a great number of issues between the Evans sisters, and the comment that the Lily woman who he'd never consider to be his aunt had made about his father being trash was just the sprinkles on top of the icing. Discovering last year that Lily Potter had faked her death and abandoned her son on their doorstep had been the icing on the cake. Instead of lunging at Skeeter who had brought her blush back under control as she started asking Vernon about Harry's childhood, his mum had lunged at her sister instead.

He had never seen a catfight as vicious as the one between his mother and her sister before. Before Lily Potter could get her wand up and curse his mother who was lunging towards her, shrieking like a Banshee, she had knocked the wand out of the woman's hand and stepped on it. Then came the hair pulling, the clawing, the clothes tearing, the punching, the kicking and the screaming of insults, and just plain screaming as the two sisters tore into each-other. The whole time this was going on, the crowd cheered and chanted "Ree-Taa, Ree-Taa, Ree-Taa.".

Harry barely repressed a smirk as he watched Aunt Petunia tear into the woman who gave birth to him. The people out there who believed that Lily Potter was a saint thanks to the good publicity she'd received over the years during which the people who actually knew her pretty much forgot all of her faults would now see the bitch for who she really was. A year ago, he never would have said or even thought that Aunt Petunia was a better mother than Lily Potter. After having met her and learning what she had done however...At least Aunt Petunia had clothed him and fed him and kept a roof over his head. The same could not be said of Lily Potter.

The burly guards who were supposed to keep the show's guests in line stood there as if they weren't sure what to do. Apparently, "Muggle Dueling" was beyond their purview, and since the two of them weren't hexing each-other...

As he quietly watched the spectacle that was his birth-mother and his aunt duking it out in front of a camera that was broadcasting the fight to at least a hundred-thousand witches and wizards across the globe, doing his best to look horrified at what was going on in front of him, James Potter moved to confront him. His friends flanked him on either side, prepared to back him up. It was three on one which was apparently a fair fight in the Wizarding World considering how people spoke of Professor Snape's conflicts with the Marauders during their school days.

"Call that Muggle Bitch off my wife." James Potter snarled.

He did his best to look innocently confused as to why they would demand that he call Aunt Petunia who was currently airing her grievances with her sister away. It wasn't like Aunt Petunia was his property, and he said as much. The Potter bastard, whom he had long since realized that Snape was right about despite the fact that the man was an irredeemable asshole who had been wrong about a great many things, then attempted to hex him. That had then been Black and Lupin's cue to join in, as Potter had always been the ringleader.

Seeing as Potter had thrown the first Hex, and done so in front of hundreds of thousands of witnesses who had seen that Potter and his two cronies had been trying to pick a fight while he'd been entirely reasonable about the situation, he felt that it would be the perfect time to defend himself. If he happened to get a little retribution in as he did so, well...

As they fought, Lupin's heart didn't seem to be in it, but then again the man's heart was rarely into anything. The man was a follower, and a dangerous one at that, because he was completely loyal to those who led him, and did everything they asked of him even when his heart wasn't in it. Potter, Black, and Dumbledore had clearly taken advantage of that loyalty and exploited it as often as possible during the last twenty-nine years. As far as he could tell, the only reason Tonks had gone along with the scheme that had involved the faking of their deaths using a pair of homunculi that they'd switched out with during a lull in the battle was because she had been desperately in love with Lupin who was meant to be the last to leave in order to confirm that all was going according to plan and that his and Voldemort's demise had been immanent, and because she'd had a child with the man.

Black, who'd never grown up and probably wouldn't have even if he hadn't been thrown into Azkaban, was eager to jump into the fight as always. If he didn't know better, he'd be willing to swear that he'd never met Black. He did know better though. Despite the fact that he looked to be in good health right now, there were still signs of the man's twelve-year stay in Azkaban. He honestly didn't know why Black had decided to return to Potter's side other than the fact that the Dementors must have driven him madder than he thought. As to whether or not Black had actually fallen through the veil in the Department of Mysteries was up for debate, since it was entirely possible that the Unspeakables had devised a way of retrieving people who had either fallen through by accident or had gone through in order to learn what was on the other side that Dumbledore hadn't bothered to tell him about.

Having spent the past year practicing in case they or someone who believed Dumbledore's ramblings about how he was going to become a Dark Lord attacked him, he managed to hold his own. Potter had obviously fallen out of practice during the two decades he'd spent living the good life and pissing away the Potter family fortune which he'd heard was close to running out. Black still wasn't back in top form despite the years he'd spent recovering from his twelve-year stint in Azkaban, and Lupin was going into this half-heartedly.

Shortly after a Reducto that had been cast by his own father had gone through the spot his head had been in only an instant before and hit the back wall of the stage causing it to explode, Dudley jumped into the fray swinging, and swearing at the man who had sired him. Vernon joined almost an instant after. He could have taken out Potter and his cronies on his own, but seeing the two men who had bullied him all his life go after the man who had been ultimately responsible for that bullying was completely priceless. Potter, Black, and Lupin who were almost ideally built for wizards, which meant that they were tall, thin, limber, and quick weren't all that good at actually fighting rather than slinging curses. Even better, Both Vernon and Dudley Dursley had several stone on the men. Vernon was more fat than muscle these days, but Dudley on the other hand was all muscle, and was his school's boxing champion. Potter's wand was snapped in rather short order, as were Black's and Lupin's, and the three men were going to be nursing a number of injuries later which would include black eyes and bloody noses.

The fight between the him and the Dursleys and the Marauders, as well as Lily and Petunia's catfight, and the chanting of the audience abruptly stopped when a familiar chill rolled over the studio. When he saw Minister Shacklebolt arrive with a number of Aurors and a Dementor, he wondered what the hell the man was playing at, and started hoping to God that today's appearance hadn't been a trap set for him since he'd spent most of his time in his heavily warded home, never kept to a specific schedule when leaving it, and generally stuck to the Muggle world when he did so, and this had been his only scheduled visit to the Wizarding World in the last year.

Shaklebolt had been Dumbledore's man, and it was possible that he believed the tripe that the former leader of the Order of the Phoenix had been spewing despite the fact that it was utter garbage. He'd seen what had happened to every Dark Lord in history and could state for a fact that he himself would never take that particular career path. Aside from the fact that such a job would most likely end in death, there was also the headache he'd have to deal with if he actually managed to conquer the Wizarding world, as ruling all of the idiots who lived in it would be a full-time job for a thousand people. That didn't even begin to include the number of people who would be bucking for his position, or the number of assassination attempts he'd be stuck dealing with every day.

Sure he wanted to change society and how things were run, but he knew better than to try doing so by gathering up a bunch of people in costume and attempting mass genocide.

Less than five seconds after the Dementor arrived, Black fell to the floor clutching his head and howling. While a part of him was concerned for the man whom he had at one time thought had cared for him and given his life for him, the rest of him said to leave it because it was no more than he deserved.

Since it wouldn't do to start flinging hexes since he didn't exactly know what was going on, and some innocent bystander could get hurt, he called up his patronus in order to defend himself from the Dementor. Soon after he'd discovered that his father had been alive all this time, his patronus had changed. Rather than being a stag, it was now a curly furred silver hound which had bright red ears for some strange reason. Every time anyone saw his patronus nowadays, they tended to try to get the hell away from it. His friends were generally more subtle in their attempts to do so than everyone else was.

As he waited to see if he should prepare to flee and attempt to make his way in the Muggle world, Shacklebolt turned to face Albus Dumbledore while the Aurors moved to flank the Potters, and the Lupins.

"Albus Dumbledore, James Charlus Potter, Lily Rose Evans Potter, Remus John Lupin, and Nymphadora Tonks Lupin," Kingsley Shacklebolt said, looking rather grim. "You are all under arrest on charges of Necromancy and Murder."

Well, that was one hell of a surprise.

"WHAT?" just about everyone in the studio including all who had been arrested besides Dumbledore roared in shock.

Considering the look on the old man's face, and the way he was fingering his wand, it looked like he was the only one in the room who knew what the hell was going on. Realizing that everyone could be in danger, especially the Minister and the Aurors who had been brought to arrest the man, he started moving into position to fight him if need be. It turned out that he moved just in time, because the former Hogwarts Headmaster had flung a lethal curse at the Minister, which just missed him since he'd knocked Kingsley over before it hit, and summoned his pet Phoenix.

Before Dumbledore could fly off for parts unknown however, someone took a leaf from Voldemort's playbook and AK'd the bird.

After transfiguring the chairs onstage into whirling metal death machines, the elderly man turned to flee in a more conventional manner while everyone was busy either protecting themselves or others in the room. There was one thing the man hadn't taken into account though, and that had been Sirius Black.

"YOU BASTARD!" the man roared as he got up from the ground where he'd been crouched and screaming his head off only moments before and leapt at the fleeing Headmaster "YOU UTTER BASTARD!"

When one reaches a century in age, one's bones aren't as strong as they used to be, even when one is a wizard. When Black brought Dumbledore down to the floor, he wasn't going anywhere, as one of the man's legs, several of his ribs, and his collarbone had been snapped when he'd hit the ground.

That day had been the one that had put Rita Skeeter in the history books. She had been credited with popularizing television in the Wizarding World, and had had a successful run hosting the Rita Skeeter Show until her death in 2056. Over the following generations, the Potter episode of the Rita Skeeter Show had been shown every year during the Third Year History of Magic course.

It had been later, when the dust had cleared, and Dumbledore, the elder Potters, and the Lupins had been put on trial that Harry had learned what the hell had been going on when the Minister of Magic had rushed into the studio in order to arrest Dumbledore.

As for why Dumbledore, the Potters, and the Lupins had been arrested, that came back to one Hermione Granger who hadn't been completely infected by the illogic of the Wizarding world and had done the most dangerous thing Hermione could ever do, which was to start asking questions. The questions that Hermione asked had started an investigation which had eventually been kicked over to the DMLE when the answers the person she had been asking had found had proven to be exceedingly disturbing.

While the creation of homunculi usually fell under the category of Alchemy, the creation of the exceedingly realistic homunculi who had been able to fool Voldemort into believing that they were in fact the Potters required Necromancy, and the human materials for those homunculi had to be fresh, very fresh, as in still alive when the ritual starts fresh.

An exploration of the Potters' graves had answered the Aurors' questions about the source of the materials and creation of the homunculi who had "died" in the Potters' place. Apparently a couple who had been members of a cadet branch of the Lestrange family had not fled the country as it had been believed they had done after they had refused to join Voldemort. Nobody knew who had replaced the Lupins however, as "Remus" and "Nymphadora" had been cremated and had had their ashes scattered by a grieving Andromeda Tonks before Dumbledore, the Potters, and the Lupins had returned.

The Lupins at least had the decency to show at least some horror when they had discovered how the homunculi who had replaced them during the last battle with Voldemort had been created. The Potters however didn't seem to care, and laughed over the fact that a couple members of a "Dark" family had "gotten what they deserved".

Black, as it turned out, had been a better man than Harry had given him credit for. After he'd been fished out of the Veil by the Unspeakables who hadn't been too happy that he'd gotten into their super double secret beer stash, Dumbledore had obliviated the man and convinced him that he'd spent twelve years living happily with the Potters and their kids until he'd gotten sick three years earlier and had to be placed in the hospital for treatment. When he had discovered otherwise, and that his friends and the man he'd trusted to be fair when it came to him had left him to rot in prison for more than a decade after the Dementor had unlocked his hidden memories, he'd been unhappy to say the least.

The Potter twins Christian and Christina had sided with their parents throughout this ordeal, and were hated because of it. The fact that they were spoilt brats who antagonized people and harassed them when they thought they could get away with it didn't help matters any. Everyone agreed that it was a tragedy and that it had been caused by the poor upbringing that they had received from James and Lily Potter when Christian and Christina Potter who had been completely broke at the time because the last of their family's money had been eaten up by legal fees had been sentenced to twenty-five years in Azkaban when they had been caught attacking Theodore Nott red-handed.

Several years after the day that Harry Dursley had appeared on Rita Skeeter's show, the Wizarding World had received an answer as to why the Killing Curse had failed to kill the Boy-Who-Lived. Apparently, the Lily Potter homunculus had been able to sense that Harry wasn't her son and, instead of abandoning the boy, she had decided to correct matters. Since she was technically dead at the time, the blood adoption ritual hadn't exactly gone as intended. Upon receiving that information, Harry had added Annabelle Lestrange's name to the list of women who had been better mothers to him than Lily Potter.

Until the day he died, Harry would tell people that the first two decades of his life had indeed been a tragedy as the history books claimed but, if it hadn't been for Rita Skeeter's show, a greater tragedy would have occurred. Public opinion had been turning against him, and eventually, the right people would eventually have turned against him as well, and he might've been imprisoned or killed when they did. If that had happened, then it was possible that Albus Dumbledore would still be running things with nobody to oppose him. Without millions of Witches and Wizards across the globe seeing Dumbledore for what he was that day when he'd tried to murder the British Minister of Magic in front of several television cameras, he could have possibly managed to smooth things over as he usually did, and bury the results of the investigation into exactly how the Potters and the Lupins had survived without anyone being the wiser.

So, in a way, crap television had saved the world.


End file.
